Announcing Zoom Player v4.50 release candidate 2

My time is short, so I won't be able to answer most things on the forum till around sunday-monday. As you can see, the main inmatrix site has been overgoing a slow transformation, the graphics have been tweaked, the layout slightly changed, we have a new mascot, soon the front page itself will change and the new skinning site/database will be up (hopefully by the end of the month).

We're hoping to release the final version by the end of the month, or possibly July 4th. So please report any bug you haven't seen fixed as soon as possible.

* New Enchancement to the Skinning code, allowing you to
specify a negative group value to make sections of the
skin only activate if the specified skin group is disabled.
* The "fnPLItemUp" and "fnPLItemDown" functions which allow
you to move items up and down within the Play List have
now been assigned keyboard macros of "Alt+PgUp" and
"Alt+PgDn". These functions have also been extended to
update the Play List Navigator, so that you can now
re-order items within the Play List using a remote.
* The Play List Navigator has been enhanced to accept the
Navigational Insert key to toggle selection of the
currently highlighted play list entry. This ties into
the above functions to allow you to re-order multiple
items at once. The color used for file selection
is selectable under "Advanced Options / OSD / Navigators".
* New Button on the Station Editor allowing you to play a new
station by appending the station to the play list instead
of clearing the play list.
* New Communication API Message 1210.
+ The skin selection dialog has been changed so that single
clicking on a selected skin will apply that skin while
double clicking will apply the skin and close the dialog.
+ The Main GUI on the default skin has changed. Some buttons
graphics have been changed to be more windows-centric. The
Eject and Options buttons have been dropped (still accessible
through the keyboard and the right-click context menu).
The Equalizer and Switch to Audio Mode buttons have been moved
in place of the Options and Eject buttons.
The Minimalistic mode button has been removed (still
accessible in several modes through the keyboard F4-F7 keys).
+ The Play List Editor GUI on the default skin has changed.
By default, most of the buttons are no longer visible (their
functionality is accessible through the right-click context
menu). However, by pressing the "+" button, you can have the
Extra Controls appear.
+ The Brownish skin is no longer part of the official distribution,
but would still be available through the Zoom Player Skin site.
- Comm API messages 1603, 1703 wouldn't work if DVD Preferred
Audio/Subtitle selection was enabled in the options dialog.
- The /AR command line did not accept "0" (disabled AR) as
a valid parameter.
- DefaultSetting.exe will now delete "zplayer.local" as well.
- Some language files may have gotten only partially loaded under
some conditions.
- Unicode text may not have been displayed properly in some of
the dialog bevel elements.
- Timeline text may have not been properly centered if unicode
characters were part of the text.
- The "click here to search" text entry on the play list editor
may not have gotten its translated text to appear properly.
- Girder Export Commands got broken again.
- Trying to load an 0 byte play list or playing a non-existant
play list off the internet could cause a crash.

No changes to renderless mode. Renderless mode will stay as-is for this version and additional changes to renderless mode, including ZP OSD (navigators, control bar, etc...) support will be forthcoming in the next version.

I have problem with the right click context menu.
In fullscreen mode, after installing RC2, the right click context menu doesn't appears.
Only if I make a right click on the window menu shows the context menu.

I have changed nothing after installing RC2 and it works normally in RC1...

I'm still using 4.50RC1 (no time to upgrade) but as I don't see this in the changelog I decided to report it in this thread.
When I have ZP minimized to the taskbar (don't know if it happens when minimized to the systray) and there are no other windows on my desktop over the place where ZP window was I can see ZP's OSD (Play Pause NextFrame and so on) even though it's minimized. I'm controlling ZP with my remote through Girder if that has something to do with the problem.

Seeking performance has changed for the worse since RC1. I haven't changed anything on my PC except install RC2, and now about half my video's pause when you seek (click on a later or earlier time in the control bar). The pause lasts anywhere up to 5-6 seconds before playback resumes. There is also sometimes a similar pause in playback when you first double click on a file to play it in ZP.

If you set a default dir for the file navigator to always open on in ZP's settings then there is a minor but annoying problem...

If you open the navigator, navigate to a subdir, then navigate to, say, the 7th file down and open it...

Now open the file navigator again... the navigator opens on the default dir as you specified in the ZP settings *but* it it opens with the active highlight on the file/dir at position 7 in this dir ( which is not the file currently playing )

i.e. The positioning in the file navigator is remembered from the previous file opened - this behaviour is fine if no default dir is specified in ZP's settings for the file navigator but if you *do* specify a default dir, then this positioning will most likely be wrong if you navigate to files in subdirs.

If a default dir is specified then the best behaviour for the file nav on opening would be:

Is the file currently playing in the default dir ?
YES, then position the active highlight on that file.
NO, then position the active highlight at the top of the default dir list.

Lupissimo:
ZP doesn't restart when you load a new file. If you're running a new file by clicking in explorer than ZP will run, notice it's already running, pass along the parmeters of the newly loaded file to the already running instance and then close itself and let the currently running instance continue. This was found to be the most reliable way to get playback to work.

dinosoup:
I know, ZP started using a 3rd party component to handle snapping as it worked better than the old code, except for the taskbar snapping. We've contacted the author and they told us they're fixing it, but... slow. Might not get fixed in this version.

Vern Dias:
I know, I know, but a call had to be made on when to release a new version and renderless mode could not have been improved enough to my liking in time. So I will do my best to release a version with blanking support in renderless mode as soon after the final is released. Blanking will be the first GUI feature for renderless. That's the best I can do at this time.

Bglith,
I don't do anything special with ZP.
I minimze it with it's minimize icon ... or may be by clicking on the ZP button in the taskbar ... not sure right now and I can't test it here at work... and afterwards I pause/play/stop/RW/FF it using Girder
...
well I've modified Girder's commands so that they send the WParam and LParam=0 as in the Brownfish plugin file example, not the keyboard shortcuts that ZP exports.
can this be the problem?

...
I suppose you are right, but I do see it
I also noticed that the OSD shows up over the currently active window too even when ZP is not that wingow
is this by design? does this have to do with the other problem?

Edit:
I've just tried it here at work. I also tried the exported .gml from ZP. The problem exists here too with either Girder Commands.